


let go

by superfluouskeys



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Angst, F/F, Post-Break Up, Post-Season/Series 03, just a quick one-shot i never posted properly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-14
Updated: 2018-03-14
Packaged: 2019-03-31 11:22:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13974048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superfluouskeys/pseuds/superfluouskeys
Summary: Lin is warmer now. Probably she feels sorry for Korra, and the thought turns Korra’s stomach.  She remembers the way things were in the beginning, when they were at each other’s throats half the time, and sex felt more like a power play than an act of love.  She both loved and hated that Lin never really softened.





	let go

**Author's Note:**

> Trying to organize my works better, so moving this here from the depths of my tumblr.

“Korra.” Somewhere distant.  Someone holding her, arms and not constricting air. The memory of warmth where there’s only endless, bone-chilling cold.  "Korra, it’s over.“

It’s over.  It’s over.  It’s over.

Lin is warmer now. Probably she feels sorry for Korra, and the thought turns Korra’s stomach.  She remembers the way things were in the beginning, when they were at each other’s throats half the time, and sex felt more like a power play than an act of love.  She both loved and hated that Lin never really softened.

Korra opens her eyes, and does her best to banish the memory of suffocating.  Still, the air feels too thin when she meets Lin’s steady gaze.

Lin doesn’t smile, but her brows knit subtly, and she smoothes Korra’s hair away from her face. Korra remembers a time when she dismissed Lin as cold and unfeeling, or just downright grouchy, and marvels at her shortsightedness.  Lin cares more deeply, more nobly, than most people Korra knows, and as Korra is realizing more and more with every passing day, that’s a pretty high bar.

Korra reaches out with a trembling hand to trace the old scars on Lin’s cheek whose origin she never thought to question.  They were perfect for each other in a way–so much that neither of them wanted to talk about, so much neither of them dared to ask.

But it’s over now. It’s over because Korra pushed too hard and Lin wouldn’t give.  It’s over because Korra needed more and Lin wouldn’t admit that she did, too.  And now what do they have to show for it? What do they know about each other anymore, besides that each would risk her life to save the other?

 _You’re never going to change,_ she’d spat not a few weeks prior. _You’re always going to be a bitter, lonely woman._

"I’m sorry for what I said,” Korra breathes, in a voice that seems to have gone permanently hoarse, but she’s not sure how to move forward.  It’s not that Lin isn’t bitter, or even lonely, it’s just that… “I wish I knew you better,” she says, closing her eyes against the muted confusion in Lin’s gaze. “I wish I’d taken the time to…ask.  Understand.”

Lin smoothes Korra’s hair again, a sturdy, grounding motion in line with the element she commands, and threads her fingers through it, cradling Korra’s head.  Korra steels herself before she opens her eyes again, unsure of what reaction she should expect, and finds, with a mixture of relief and disappointment, that Lin’s face remains mostly unchanged in the face of Korra’s personal revelation.

“You won’t like to hear it,” says Lin, averting her eyes, “but you’re young.  Understanding comes with time.  I owe you more of an apology for that than you do to me.”

Now it’s Korra’s turn to avert her eyes.  She thinks of the ways she’s lashed out over the past couple of years, the ways she’s fought off help and rejected consolation, the ways she’s misinterpreted her own emotions and dragged others along for the ride. “Honestly?” she confesses. “I think a part of me liked the distance you kept.”

Lin’s frown deepens and she nods slowly, grip subconsciously tightening in Korra’s hair.  "But now you’re changing,“ she says, quietly.

The sorrow washes over Korra afresh, wraps its icy grip around her heart as she remembers it’s over, it’s over, it’s over, and there’s no fixing it, because Korra is gravely injured and needs time to heal, and Lin has her job and her life to go back to, and the both of them have had their lives upended with new discoveries and ancient wounds reopened, and maybe neither of them is really ready to take on such changes as part of a team.

But it aches all the more, because it’s over but it’s not. Their lives are headed in separate directions, but their hearts are still on the same page.

Korra holds Lin’s face between her hands, tries desperately to let go of the wish for things to be different.  Failing that, she wishes she could just say what’s in her heart.  Korra remembers thinking the words, biting them back, sure they didn’t fit with Lin or that she didn’t understand them herself, and now it’s all wrong and far, far too late.

"So are you,” Korra says instead, with the first smile she’s managed since the fight.

Lin leans in and kisses her forehead, the memory of warmth where there’s only bone-chilling cold, and no sooner does she pull away than Korra pulls her back down, kisses her lips, her chin, the scars on her cheek, and the little crease between her brows. She tries to let go with each kiss, tries to turn her wishes for what can’t be into wishes for better days for the both of them.  She wraps her arms, weak and shaking, around Lin’s shoulders, strong and sturdy as the element she commands, and when at last Korra relents, she tries to commit every last detail of the small, sad smile Lin offers her then to memory.

Lin is still cradling Korra’s head in her hand, still has Korra more or less in her lap, like she somehow just instinctively knew how to sit so as not to aggravate any of Korra’s injuries.  Her thumb strokes Korra’s cheekbone, never quite an idle gesture, and when she leans in to kiss Korra’s lips one last time, there’s such weight, such deliberation in the action.

“Hang in there, kid,” she says, almost severely, and Korra feels another genuine smile crossing her lips, even as she feels tears prickling at the corners of her eyes.

Sleep reclaims her easily after that, and no more nightmares find her that evening.  When she wakes, she’s almost at peace, until she remembers that it’s well and truly over, and she feels no closer to healing, and no closer to letting go of Lin than she did before.


End file.
